Clearing the situation...

Have to remember to tell the web guys to put the Google-block on these blogs.

Some of the press officers here are Googling athlete names and pulling up these blogs as though they are actual newspaper articles. Trying to explain it's a diary showing the process of covering the Olympics and being in Greece doesn't explain it enough, especially when people can Google an athlete's name and get what looks like a published article. I've gotten a few nasty e-mails from around the U.S. demanding I print apologies to the U.S. women wrestlers, even though the column that appeared in The Morning Call was a favorable one.

And I should throw in here that when John Fuller of USA Wrestling said I should be working for them, he was only joking. I was not doing his job. I was just shocked that so many other reporters who didn't know anything about wrestling were at the women's finals for a story.

So, if someone is Googling this, I never meant to imply that U.S. wrestler Sara McMann didn't have reason to cry after winning the silver medal (and re-reading that entry, I don't think I implied that at all). Her emotions took so long to control, however, that in this diary, I admitted that the circumstances around the event made it very difficult to write an article.

Some complainers chastised me for comparing the velodrome with wrestling, which I never did. I, like every other reporter who covered the road cycling and track cycling, found the mixed zones to be an absolute disgrace as far as to gaining access at those venues. The wrestling is certainly not that way.

The track and field was incredibly easy to get a specific athlete, and the soccer was easy enough as well, although a bit more crowded than the wrestling. The fencing was also very accessible and media friendly, with TV crews mixing in harmony with the print media.

With that out of the way, my journal continues.

I went to the gold medal final in women's soccer where the U.S. edged Brazil 2-1 in the last go-round together for the most storied names in U.S. women's soccer. Nice event, but just as with the women's wrestling, I found myself flanked by reporters who didn't know a lot about soccer other than the name Mia Hamm, and they were hoping for her to score the "golden goal" in overtime.

After visiting three police stations twice each on Thursday, taking up six hours of my day, I was finally able to file a police report on the lost/stolen camera. Not a fun way to spend the day, especially when you get bounced around from the police station near the Olympic center, which tells you that you need to go to the police station nearest the hotel where you are staying to file a report; then the automatic-weapon carrying guard in front of that police station puts the barrel of his gun in the crook of his arm and has the barrel pointing at you telling you that you can't enter that station to make a report. After much back-and-forth (40-minute trips by bus both ways), and trying to get help at the media help desk, I finally got a security officer at the Main Press Center to call the closest police station, alert them as to why I was coming. There, they took care of my report, which took about 150 minutes once I entered the building. The person who took the report didn't speak English, and a plain-clothes detective and body armor-wearing guard acted as translators.

This morning already, U.S. heavyweight Kerry McCoy has won his first match and I'm sitting in Ano Liossia wrestling hall listening to a group of Iranian wrestling fans chant "Ko-Da-Ee" for their wrestler, whose name is Majid Khodaei, in the 84-kilo class, the same weight class as U.S. hopeful Cael Sanderson, the only unbeaten, four-time champion in NCAA history. Sanderson was next up on the same mat. During the morning sessions, I sat next to an Iranian reporter. His ink pen ran out and he needed a black pen - it had to be black he insisted in limited English - so I gave him one. I don't speak his language, but I did give him one of the commemorative Olympic pins from The Morning Call that we're handing out over here. Hands Across The Nations and all.